Of Typos and Algebra

I had lessons on how to type when I was in high school. It was in ancient times when type writers still ruled. At least they did in the poorer outposts of south Georgia where computers had not yet become so mundane as to be affordable. This was in the days when the things that happen in the palm of your electronically charged hand were not possible in the most evolved form of desk top magicks.

We had white tape that worked convoluted spells to disappear typos that now a days only require a couple of strokes of the delete key to fashion the illusion of authorian perfection. To have fingers master the location of each and every key required the practice of simplistic exercises again and again and again. The exercises were mind numbingly exact and precise and repetative and exact and precise and repetative. I hated it. I am rebellious by nature (we all are - check the Bible).

But I was proud years later when my mother asked me if I had to look at the keys while typing and I was able to honestly tell her no. My father had typed up most of her term papers when she had gone back to school in her forties. The fact that I could type up my own papers with the perfection brought about through the previously mentioned magical delete key, well, I rose up a few notches on her maternal grid of pride.

I will not name our typing teacher just in case she could still frame a lawsuit for mental anguish all these years later and I would like to hope that I could hang onto a few of the classic comic books I still have. But oh dear lord what torture. I am a type A personality who must have been borderline ADD - at least all the teachers who had no hope of controlling me must still be telling themselves that I had to be ADD right? Oh, look at the puppy.

But I digress. Or regress. Something along those lines.

I do not ever remember thinking that I would never use typing in my future. I was pretty sure I would. At least until I was rich enough to hire a secretary (still waiting on that). I know I would need typing but I still hated the repetition of learning it. I think that says something pretty important about some sort of flaw in me that I hated learning how to do something that I knew that I would need some day.

At least I was stupid enough to think that I would never need algebra. I was typical of the stereotypical teen in thinking that I would never need to use the hard to spell math word, "algebra". I cannot begin to tell you the spreadsheets that I have built over the past 19 years for work that are firmly based on numbers being converted to alphabet for no apparent reason.

But I digest. Or regress. Or digress. Or something....

At least I am able to type reasonably well and have only a few fleeting memories of being bored out of my mind.